A friend of hers was a retired commercial fisherman who’d given up his nets but kept whatever license he needed to sell to the Stagnaro brothers' restaurant on the wharf. Slim — only name I knew — fished every day, and twice a week he’d swing past the house at 6 a.m. If I wasn't on the curb, he drove by. If I was, we'd launch his skiff and head out into Monterey Bay.

We’d get lingcod, rockfish, a few salmon, an occasional shark (I’m sorry to say he cut the tails off those and let them sink, bleeding, into the water). Now and then we saw whales and sea turtles, and in my memory, once a manta ray so big the tips of its wings curled up on both sides of the boat. That's too far north for a manta, but I prefer to believe. Slim sold our catch to the Stagnaros and split the take 75-25 with me. Best job I ever had.

That was Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Sundays, we went out at 4:30 a.m., and Grandma went with us, but don’t think "little old lady."

"Your grandma's a pisser," Slim observed, and she was. She claimed to have swum the Golden Gate 20 years before there was a bridge. I saw her, at 60-something, step into the water near the Santa Cruz boardwalk, swim around Lighthouse Point and come ashore at Natural Bridges State Park, three miles away.

And she was a plogger, a term I just learned this week for a trend the internet says is sweeping the nation.

"Plogging" is a combination of "jogging" and "plucka upp," Swedish for "picking up." According to the Washington Post, it’s a "new fitness trend" and we've "seen people doing it," jogging or walking with a bag to hold trash they pick up along the way.

I first read about this years ago, and it made sense. In those days, though, I was a Serious Runner — I couldn’t take time to pick up trash. Now I’m a casual walker, and stopping to pick up a soda can is a chance to catch my breath, plus bending over is a little nudge in the direction of the flexibility I’m going to regain one of these days (meanwhile, tie this shoe for me, could you?).

No need to belabor this: I broke some trash bags out of the garage, found a pair of cheap gloves and I’m improving the planet one candy wrapper at a time. Mostly I do it in the neighborhood, and it’s a little embarrassing when people see me.